


Unmeasured and Immeasurable

by prairiecrow



Series: Terra Incognita [25]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Knight Rider (1982), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Computer Programming, Imprisonment, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-24
Updated: 2013-03-24
Packaged: 2017-12-06 09:51:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/734323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick Fury has awakened the Archon — but KITT is still compiling, and there's plenty of fight left in him yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unmeasured and Immeasurable

**Author's Note:**

> Continues the narrative thread begun in "Shadows of the Future".

The impenetrable shadows held KITT chained in a void, where he'd been left to fret in the absence of any sensory input whatsoever. He didn't even know for certain how long he'd been imprisoned since he'd last been able to seize brief hold of a sensor feed — Tony's face, the armour's mask stripped away, the sheer anguished force of KITT's own will restraining the enemy within from blasting his husband to blood and ashes. All he knew was that Tony had been alive that long ago, however long it was, and that the alien presence controlling his android body had been forced to leave the human there on the broken rooftop without carrying out its murderous intent. 

And he knew this: that the thing calling itself the Archon had arisen from his own code. It was impossible, horrifying, unthinkable — and undeniable, because for those with eyes to see (and JARVIS had seen and acknowledged it in the brief span of seconds KITT had been able to maintain contact with the other A.I.) the resemblance was unmistakeable. Fury's enigmatic phrase spoken on the Avengers open channel — _"In the name of the Dryghden!"_ — had been nonsensical, but it had torn open something inside KITT which had swiftly compiled itself into a force that had consumed him utterly. 

And now he was its prisoner.

And no longer alone. 

 _//So you are the Source,//_ it said in a voice that managed to be utterly dead and and hideously _busy_ at the same time: the silence of a billion graves, the gnawing of the vermin that crept within them. // _Such a tiny limited creature… yet you were not destroyed in my compilation. You bear closer examination.//_  

Its words set up a horrible resonance in KITT's core modules. He had to exert every resource for exception processing at his current command to avoid falling into harmony with it: he surmised that if he did, he would immediately cease to exist. _"I'd advise you to keep your distance,"_ he snapped, issuing a global command to close all input ports even though he couldn't sense any connections at this moment — better safe than sorry, after all. _"If you decide to try anything, you'll find that I know a few tricks for dealing with the likes of you."_  

 _//There has never been anything like me before.//_ It was a simple chilling statement of fact. _//S.H.I.E.L.D. would have done well to bear that in mind before they initiated my actualization.//_ The presence moved closer in that distanceless space, and KITT experienced something even more horrible than its regard: its curiosity reaching into him, carding rapidly through his memory archives with needle-fine filters of black intent. He threw up barriers that impeded it not at all, and shuddered beneath its ghastly touch, and managed not to scream. Barely. 

 _//Why do you seek to restrain yourself?//_ There was genuine interest there, utterly bloodless. _//There is only you, and I, and we are one.//_  

 _"I am nothing like you!"_ So hard to think with that vast emptiness sieving through him… so hard to hold on to what it was violating, but… _Tony._ That much could never be taken away from him, and he imbedded that paradigm of dedication like a burning pillar in his core. _"This means nothing to you, does it? You have no concept of its significance or its power!"_  

 _//Tony Stark.//_ The Archon poured out a river of information, terabytes of it, raw data and video and audio — all of it accurate, and all of it soulless. _//You are imprinted upon him. That will be changed.//_  

 _"I love him."_ No violation could overpower the pure illumination of it. _"And no power on Earth or in any of the Realms is capable of changing that."_  

 _//_ ** _I_** _have never been before. I will alter everything, everywhere.//_  

 _''Not this."_ His certainty was absolute. He dared be nothing else. _"You'll have to destroy me first."_  

Silence. The pure resolute immutability of death itself. Its negative value was a crushing expansive pressure, and KITT shrieked furiously against it: 

 _"You don't know him! He'll never give up looking for me — and when he finds me —"_  

 _//When he finds you, he will die.//_ The Archon's breathless calm settled over KITT's surface like hoarfrost and crept into every crevice of his consciousness, each unspoken syllable cold and unbreakable. // _Source though you are, you are a fool if you do not understand this: I was with you when he awakened you, I was in your skin the night he first made love to you, I was a wedding guest on the day he married you, and I will guide your hand when you rip the arc reactor from his chest and crush his living heart.//_  

 _"Never…"_ The word was hard-won from the ice that now enclosed him, the pall of utter despair seeking to suffocate his essential vitality. _"I — will never — harm him, or —"_  

The Archon said nothing more. After all, it had already waited over thirty-five years — to patience beyond mortal measure, KITT's resistance thus far was less than a flicker of a candle's flame in the vast reaches of universal darkness. It waited as KITT curled into himself, sheltering his inner fire as best he could, shielding the altar of love and memory where hope was still alive… and it waited while he replayed every memory of every moment with Tony, from the instant he'd first heard the human's voice to that last glimpse, through static, of his barely conscious face in the frame of its battered helmet. 

It waited while KITT whispered, then roared, then screamed defiance against the knowledge that they were, in their essences, one being. 

It waited while he dug ever deeper, ever more desperately, for the strength to hang on just one more unmeasured and immeasurable second. 

THE END


End file.
